The Latest

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

It's time for a journey through the Fox Tuesday schedule in 2016-17...

fall

Year

8:00

8:30

9:00

9:30

Avg

2015-16

Grandfathered

The Grinder

Scream Queens

Scream Queens

72

2015-16

72

63

76

76

72

2015-16

72

63

76

76

72

2015-16

68

68

76

76

72

2016-17

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

New Girl

Scream Queens

Scream Queens

63 (-12%)

2016-17

78 (+8%)

75 (+20%)

50 (-34%)

50 (-34%)

63.2677364123277

2016-17

78.3703573623672

75.1049258056019

50 (-34%)

50 (-34%)

63.2677364123277

2016-17

77 (+14%)

76.7376415839846

50 (-34%)

50 (-34%)

63.2677364123277

VsAvg

-23%

-0.229230435359368

-54%

-0.536161140064406

-39%

Rank

11/16

11/16

16/16

16/16

15/16

Instead of modest newbies Grandfathered and The Grinder, Fox went back to its reliable Tuesday comedy veterans in the fall, and saw some ratings improvement in the 8/7c hour. But that was of absolutely no help to Scream Queens, which utterly collapsed from its already unimpressive season one ratings.

winter

Year

8:00

8:30

9:00

9:30

Avg

2015-16

New Girl

Grandfathered

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The Grinder

66

2015-16

89

61

68

46

66

2015-16

89

61

68

46

66

2015-16

75

75

57

57

66

2016-17

New Girl

The Mick

Bones

Bones

74 (+12%)

2016-17

81 (-10%)

86 (+41%)

65 (+14%)

65 (+14%)

74.3509285885016

2016-17

80.6153415576433

86.171110525751

65 (+14%)

65 (+14%)

74.3509285885016

2016-17

83 (+11%)

83.3932260416972

65 (+14%)

65 (+14%)

74.3509285885016

VsAvg

-60%

-0.598386699840973

-59%

-0.585347018635344

-59%

Rank

13/16

13/16

15/16

15/16

15/16

The night took a positive turn starting in the winter, as Bones was able to improve on last year's second comedy hour, and The Mick proved a much stronger option than the new comedies used a year ago.

spring

Year

8:00

8:30

9:00

9:30

Avg

2015-16

New Girl

Grandfathered

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The Grinder

53

2015-16

67

43

60

40

53

2015-16

67

43

60

40

53

2015-16

55

55

50

50

53

2016-17

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The Mick

Prison Break

Prison Break

69 (+32%)

2016-17

54 (-20%)

67 (+53%)

79 (+57%)

79 (+57%)

69.4244354933123

2016-17

53.8796206866274

66.6692276172915

79 (+57%)

79 (+57%)

69.4244354933123

2016-17

60 (+9%)

60.2744241519595

79 (+57%)

79 (+57%)

69.4244354933123

VsAvg

-66%

-0.656486894983264

-35%

-0.347330361814153

-53%

Rank

14/16

14/16

12/16

12/16

13/16

Prison Break's spring revival popped on premiere night and fell a decent amount from there but remained a huge timeslot gainer. Brooklyn and The Mick had some underwhelming spring deliveries, but that's not exactly a new thing for young-skewing comedies after DST; the year-to-year gains in the hour were similar to the winter.

New Girl: It's interesting that the scheduling for Fox's Tuesday vets was basically flipped from 2015-16 to 2016-17; New Girl got the easier draw by wrapping in early April this year, after doing a bunch of double-pumps in the deep spring last year. In light of the improved situation, I think it's safe to say New Girl continued getting weaker on the whole, though its last couple 0.9's were kinda impressive. Grade: C+.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Meanwhile, Brooklyn went from wrapping in April last year to airing seven episodes at 8:00 in May this year, and was off the air for the entire winter. I think this adds up to the same kind of behavior as New Girl: definitely a bit weaker. But in this case, not as bad as the raw trend indicates. Grade: C+.

The Mick: Not a game-changer, but still a not-insignificant step up from the likes of Grandfathered and The Grinder on this night last year. Since most of its timeslot y2y comparisons were against Grandfathered, it continued to look good in that metric even as it went fractional in the second half of the season. The 0.7 finale leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth but I'll still go with a Grade: B.

Scream Queens: It's right there with Quantico among the worst trends on TV, because it was down huge despite having a similar if not even better situation. (Though maybe facing This Is Us cancels out the stronger lead-in to some extent.) And in this case, you can't really blame it being front-loaded last season, because the year-to-year trends were pretty similar throughout the season. Grade: F.

Bones: It was set up to succeed by airing exclusively in the high-viewed winter, and The Mick turned out to be a better lead-in than I was expecting. But it still couldn't break even in Plus, and didn't crack a 1.0 until the series finale. Great run, but underwhelming last few seasons. Grade: C.

Prison Break: This worked out well for Fox, especially when compared against the 24 revival and even the previous occupant, the Bones final season. The raw numbers weren't that different but Prison Break didn't have the Super Bowl exposure, aired months later on the calendar, and also had very real interest from the A18-34 set. It beat the final season Plus of the original run, which is not that huge of an accomplishment, but it was still a solid player by Fox standards and that did not seem like a given going in. Grade: B+.

The names in this last table link to the shows' War of 18-49 pages. Links with an asterisk(*) have been updated with the new info. Updates to younger shows will come later in the summer.